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| My second letter to Elan Vital re Rawat's claims of divinity |  | ||
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I sent this letter to Elan Vital this morning:
March 17, 2005 Dear Elan Vital: Attached below, is my letter dated February 11, 2005, which I previously emailed to you. In that letter, I quote a number of statements of Prem Rawat, in your official publications, in which he clearly claims to be the living incarnation of God, which contradicts the implication taken from the answers to FAQs on your organization's website. Since that date, one additional, and even more direct and conclusive, quotes of Mr. Rawat has come to my attention. The following quote comes from a speech Mr. Rawat gave in Tokyo Japan on October 3, 1972, as published in the official publication of Elan Vital (when it was called Divine Light Mission) called "And it is Divine." The greatest problem all around the world today, whether in America, Japan, China, Russia, India or anywhere else in the world, is that people are not in peace. People want peace. Today, if two people fight, the government is supposed to settle them down. But when governments fight, who is going to settle them down? The only one who can settle the governments down is the Perfect Master, the incarnation of God Himself, who comes to Earth to save mankind. Tokyo, Japan, October 3, 1972 (And it is Divine, July 1973) As you can see, in this quote Mr. Rawat unequivocally labels himself "the incarnation of God Himself." While I have not noticed that Elan Vital has clarified its website, certainly you are in the process of doing that. I look forward to seeing the revisions. Joe Whalen
February 11, 2005 Dear Elan Vital, As a former follower/student/devotee of Prem Rawat (aka Maharaji, aka Guru Maharaj Ji), and a former employee of Elan Vital, I share a personal history with both. Accordingly I feel the need to complain about the misleading and inaccurate statements on your website under the title 'FAQ' (frequently asked questions) about that shared history. Over the past few years, Elan Vital has consistently used "FAQs" and the answers to the rhetorical questions drafted by you organization on its website in a fashion that provides inaccurate information to the public. One FAQ, in particular, that used to be on your website, stated that "Maharaji never at any time claimed to be God" which was downright false and could easily be proven so through documentation of Prem Rawat's own statements as published by Elan Vital. I wrote to you some time about about this, and I am pleased to see that Elan Vital has removed the offending statement and I applaud you for doing so. However the FAQs and answers on the current version of your website, while less blatantly false, are equally misleading to the public. For example, you ask the rhetorical question about whether people "venerate" Prem Rawat and answer it with a quote from Prem Rawat, with the clear implication that Mr. Rawat does not, and never has, claimed to be the incarnation of God, or a divine being worthy of veneration. The Prem Rawat quote as written on your website is as follows: " People used to call me Guru. I speak from my heart, and what happens is from one heart to another. I'm not trying to place myself above people. I am a human being. Many things have been said about me. Many of these things have come from people's own emotions, good or bad. I am proud to be a human being. I am very happy that I have this life. I am also happy that I can feel joy and pain like everyone else. Some people would love to put labels on me, but I am just me."If this statement is true -- if Mr. Rawat has consistently presented himself to the public as a mere "human being" since his arrival in North America in the 1970s -- how do you explain the following quotes of Mr. Rawat? The first is found in Elan Vital's publication, 'And It Is Divine,' published in 1974 under Elan Vital's earlier name, Divine Light Mission. The letter is addressed to readers of the magazine, and contains Maharaji's own signature (Sant Ji Maharaj as Mr. Rawat has also been known), and states clearly that Mr. Rawawt/Maharaji claims to be the manifestation of the 'Lord of Creation.' The letter says, in pertinent part: Dear Reader,... There has never been a time when the Lord of Creation did not manifest Himself in human form, and come to this planet Earth to do away with evil and spread the True Knowledge. But history is a pendulum which is always in swing. There have been so many scriptures, but still people have never been able to understand Him. Divine Light Mission wants to bring world peace by sharing the Knowledge which is within us by the grace of Almighty Lord. In this magazine, we hope to give information about the peace which lives within us, which Guru Maharaj Ji reveals. Sant Ji Maharaj The second is from a speech Maharaji gave in Essen, Germany on August 31, 1975 and is also published in an Elan Vital publication. Again, in this speech Maharaji clearly claims to be 'the Lord in Physical Body.' "And if there has to be devotee, he has to be in a physical form. A devotee has to devote something. Have you understood now? To devote something, he has to be in a physical form. And where is it possible for him to be in physical form? On the earth. And with whom can he be in the physical form? With the Lord, who is in His physical form ! He has to be with the Physical Lord who has come into this physical world with a Physical Body...." Third is a speech Mr. Rawat gave in Malibu, California on June 11, 1978, again as published in an Elan Vital magazine. In this speech, Maharaji, without any vagueness whatsoever, claims, as Guru Maharaji Ji, which your website admits he called himself in the past, to be 'the Lord all powerful.' "In this lifetime, we have the opportunity to realize, to be with GURU MAHARAJ JI. Be it not GURU MAHARAJ JI - You know maybe they didn't call him GURU MAHARAJ JI - Maybe they called him Lord, anything to be with that power. To be with that thing. To be not infinite. And yet to be with the infinite. To be here as individuals. And yet to be able to be next to the person who is everything, GURU MAHARAJ JI, The Lord all powerful....." In the Elan Vital publication, 'The Living Master', published in 1978, a speech Prem Rawat gave in Denver, Colorado, on October 12, 1974 is printed. In this speech, Maharaji clearly equates 'Guru Maharaj Ji,' with 'God.' "It's been said that Guru Maharaj Ji comes, or God comes into the world, when there is a decline in religion. God comes, Guru Maharaj Ji comes, and helpsthe world." Finally, it is important to to point out that not only did Prem Rawat/Maharaji directly claim to be the incarnation of God on numerous occasions as recorded in your organization's own publications, he also directly compared himself to Krishna and Jesus Christ, who are widely believed to also have been incarnations of God. In fact, in the following quote taken from The Divine Times of February 15, 1973, a publication of Elan Vital, he does both. He compares himself to both Jesus and Krishna and also directly claims to be God. He does this by saying that Jesus and Krishna revealed the same "knowledge" he does, that God comes to reveal knowledge and that HE is revealing knowledge. The only possible conclusion is that Prem Rawat claimed to be the incarnation of God. "Who is Guru Maharaj Ji? I have not come to establish a new religion or sect, but I have come to give you Knowledge of Truth. If you come to me with a guileless heart you will surely receive this most ancient spiritual Knowledge, which, if practised upon, will give us perfect peace of mind. Jesus gave us this Knowledge, Krishna gave us this Knowledge, but now we must look again for a new Master to show us the light. The sun comes and goes away but we don't look for the light of day which has just gone. We look for the new rising sun. The sun is there, but it rises in a new beautiful way, and we look for that. In the same way, God is the same, but now we look for him to come, in a new way, to give this Knowledge." Given the overwhelming evidence, and there are many other statements made by Mr. Rawat in which he, expicitly and implicitly, claimed to be the incarnation of God and "put those labels" on himself by his own words, and given that Elan Vital itself, has produced publications over the years proving such statements, isn't the above quote from Mr. Rawat misleading at best and dishonest at worst? If it is Elan Vital's and Mr. Rawat's contention that at certain times Mr. Rawat claimed to be the living incarnation of God, but now only claims to be "a human being" who does "not place [himself] above people," shouldn't Elan Vital's FAQs on this subject reflect that this is a change in Mr. Rawat's opinion of himself and that he disavows his earlier statements to the contrary? I trust that Elan Vital with make efforts to correct the obviously misleading and inaccurate explanations on its website at the earliest opportunity. Sincerely, Joe Whalen San Francisco, California USA
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